TELEGRAM TO L. M. KARAKHAN[1]

Written:Written on January 3 (16), 1918Published:First published in 1905 inCollected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 50.

      Printed from the text of the telegraph tape.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      page53a.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:D. MorosPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

KarakhanRussian Peace DelegationBrest-LitovskCopy to Supreme Commander-in-Chief Krylenko

Ireceived your telegram concerning the report from the
members of the Revolutionary Committee of the 8th Army
—Kuzmin and
Reizon.[2]I am passing this telegram on
to the Commander-in-Chief with my advice: not to give
way to the provocation of the Kiev Rada, not to trust it,
and to act in an armed, organised and most resolute way
against the Rumanian counter-revolutionary command,
against the Kaledinites and their accomplices in the Kiev
Rada.

[1]Transmittedby direct line.—Ed.

[2]Kuzminand Reizon reported provocatory acts by the Ukrainian
Central Rada and the counter-revolutionary command of the
Rumanian Front aimed at demoralising and disarming the 8th 
Army.

TheUkrainian Central Rada—a counter-revolutionary
bourgeois-nationalist organisation. After the victory of the October
Revolution it proclaimed itself the supreme organ of the “
Ukrainian People’s Republic” and began an open struggle against
Soviet power.

Atthe First All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets held in Kharkov
in December 1917, the Ukraine was proclaimed a SovietRepublic. The Congress declared the power of the Central Rada
overthrown. The Council of People’s Commissars of the R.S.F.S.R.
recognised the Ukrainian Soviet Government as the sole
legitimate government of the Ukraine. In January 1918, Soviet troops
in the Ukraine launched an offensive and on January 26 (
February 8) seized Kiev and deposed the bourgeois Rada.

TheCentral Rada, routed and driven from the territory of
the Soviet Ukraine, and having no support among the working
masses, allied itself with the German imperialists in order to
overthrow Soviet power and restore the bourgeois regime in the
Ukraine. During the peace negotiations between the Soviet
Republic and Germany, the Rada sent its delegation to Brest–
Litovsk and behind the back of the Soviet delegation concluded a
separate peace with Germany, by which it undertook to supply
Germany with Ukrainian grain, coal and raw materials in return
for military assistance in the struggle against Soviet power. In
March 1918 the Rada returned to Kiev with the Austrian and
German invaders and became their puppet. At the end of April
the interventionists dismissed the Rada, realising that it was
incapable of suppressing the revolutionary movement in the
Ukraine and ensuring delivery of the required food supplies.